


Hearth and Home

by mycapeisplaid



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Parentlock, Realism, Rosie's a teenager, fatherhood isn't easy, post-s4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 20:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9564581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mycapeisplaid/pseuds/mycapeisplaid
Summary: Sixteen years after the east wind came and went, two men embrace their future.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the usual suspects, BettySwallocks, who prevents me from writing sentimental, American drivel (sorry about the end, dear), and CanolaCrush, who is a superlative editor. Both put their time in on this piece.

Hearth and Home

Whispers from the kitchen can only mean one thing: Rosie is plotting. John has eavesdropped on enough of her conversations to know when she’s up to something -- or trying to hide something. She’s given up on the latter, mostly. There’s not much one can get past her father when Sherlock Holmes is in the picture.

John enters to see Rosie and her friend Nina sharing an after-school snack. They’ve made brownies, and the flat smells delicious. He helps himself and raises an eyebrow at the girls, who have yet to resume talking.

“Well,” he sighs, pretending to be put out. “What is it this time? ‘Cause if you’re asking to go to Glastonbury again, you’ve got another think coming.”

Rosie jumps down from where she was sitting on the worktop. “No, dad. No scheming. Promise.”

“Yeah.” John looks pointedly at Nina. Rosie chooses great friends, if he’s honest about it. Rosie’s decision-making, however, leaves much to be desired. “I remember last time.”

“That was all Ros,” says Nina, holding up her hands.

John inwardly grimaces. He despises the name Rosamund but Rosie fits his daughter well. He hates the new nickname; it’s a constant reminder that his daughter is no longer the little girl she once was. While he’s glad she’s independent and proud of the young woman she’s becoming, there’s still a part of him that clutches to her babyhood, those nights she’d sleep on his chest, or those days she’d hold his index finger as they’d stroll through Regent’s Park. He’s never been the type to dote on small children or bemoan their aging, but there was something about being so needed that agreed with him. However, fatherhood has been exhausting and often frustrating. Even though they got on fairly well, loved and needed one another, raising a child alone was not the life John had envisioned for himself.

It was what it was. And what it was was no longer shit, but it was reality.

“Well, I’m off,” says Nina, picking up her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”

Rosie mock-salutes and flips on the kettle. “How was work?” she asks when Nina’s gone.

John isn’t deterred. “What were you two talking about?”

“Nothing.” She sits. “Really. Nothing you’d be interested in, at least.”

He’s trying. Sherlock has assured him a hundred times that talking to one’s daughter is critical to healthy relationships. John knows he’s right. He never talked to Mary. Not really talked, not about the things that mattered. It’s the least he can do.

“Try me?” he asks.

She draws up a knee and leans her chin on it. “Nina’s mum has a friend. A single friend. A single, interested friend.”

“Interested?”

“Yes. In _you_. Romantically,” she clarifies. “I told her you weren’t interested.”

“How do you know I’m not interested?”

 

“Oh come on, Dad.” The kettle clicks; she gets up and makes herself and her father a cuppa. “You’re still wearing your ring.”

John thumbs it. He looks. He never takes it off. There’s silence as Rosie adds three teaspoons of sugar to her tea. She takes it exactly like Sherlock does.

“Should I take it off?” he asks, half to himself, half to his daughter.

She tips her head to the side, and John marvels at genetics: Mary had done that all the time. “I guess that depends on whether you consider yourself married,” she says before sitting at the table across from him.

He’s not sure. He stopped mourning Mary years ago. It’s hard to mourn when you’re exhausted and angry about being exhausted. Does he consider himself still married to her? What does it mean to be widowed? Legally, he’s single. He doesn’t much like the thought of being married to a ghost. 

“Would you… how would you feel if I went out with someone?” he finally asks. 

She smiles wryly and half rolls her eyes. She opens her mouth to speak, but then closes it, abandoning the thought. “Never mind. It’s fine. Whatever floats your boat.”

“No, really.” _I’m trying, Rosie,_ he thinks. _This is me, trying_. “What were you going to say?”

Her face does this thing that it does when she’s going to say something he’s not going to like. She steels herself, and then lets him have it. “You already do date. You’ve been dating my whole life.”

His eyebrows come together. He hasn’t been out with a woman in ages. Years. Talk about trust issues -- after what happened with Sherlock’s sister, he could barely stomach a woman’s interested smile or raised eyebrow. And then, finally, when he’d moved on from that, it just didn’t hold the same appeal as it once did. He had Rosie to think about, after all. He’s accepted celibacy, too, and the intense longings for physicality have dwindled. She thinks he’s been dating her whole life? Is his daughter on drugs?

“Oh for God’s sake, Dad. Sherlock!”

“What about him?”

“Never mind. Just. Forget about it. It’s fine.” She gets up.

No ghost prompts him this time. “Stay,” he says, “we’re talking.” 

She flops back in her chair. He can feel the frustration rolling off her -- Sherlock says he does the same thing, gives off the same vibe. “You don’t talk,” she sulks. “You evade. Selectively ignore.”

“You’re the one who just got up,” he strikes back, and then instantly regrets it. “God, I’m.” He huffs a laugh. “I’m still shit at this. After all these years. Tell me, Rosie. What about Sherlock? We’re not ‘dating’, it’s not like that. You know that as well as I do.”

“But you could be. You practically are. You’re so...committed.”

John squirms a bit. Surely one is not supposed to have conversations with one’s daughter about intimate relationships. He and Sherlock have danced around it for years. It’s reached a lovely equilibrium at last; they are fast friends, they share silence and space and even hug. They don’t tell each other they love each other because it is an acknowledged fact. They have never kissed, although John would be lying to himself if he denied thinking about it. He thinks about it more than he should. Sherlock is family.

“We’re very close friends,” he settles on. “That’s all.”

She traces a stain on the table with her index finger. “I watched them,” she finally says, her eyes downcast. “The DVDs my mother made. I watched them.”

His throat is dry and his heart races. He rubs his brow. Sherlock had given him the disc she’d left for him, and John had taken both of them and never watched them again. He’d tried binning them once, but found he couldn’t. “How?” he manages. They haven’t used a DVD player in fifteen years.

“I was sorting out the linen cupboard and found the old DVD player and a load of movies on the top shelf. I was bored, Dad. You two were off...doing _whatever_...and I thought I’d plug it in and see if it still worked.”

“You’ve been snooping around, going through my things…”

 

“I wasn’t snooping!” she says, indignant. “If putting them in the _Kill Bill_ case was your way of concealing them, that was pretty pathetic. You should have chosen your underwear drawer or something.”

She’s right. So much for hiding in plain sight.

He forces himself to keep the conversation going. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“What did you think?”

“Of my mother?” Rosie takes a deep breath, blows it out. “A bit mad, wasn’t she?” 

The way she says it is so Mary that John can’t help but hiccup a laugh. “She had a thing for filming stuff.”

“Ew, God, gross.”

“Not like that.” This whole thing is so absurd. John scrubs at his face and looks at her. 

“Why’d she do that? Send them after she died? Seems...weird.”

John plays with his teacup. He’s drunk none of it, and it’s stone cold. It _was_ weird. Who records themselves and delivers messages from beyond the grave? “There were a lot of things we never said to each other,” he admits. “When she died, there were…things I’d never told her. We didn’t know each other as well as we thought we did.”

“Why’d you get married, then? You looked happy in your wedding video.”

“You got that out again, too?” He’d never hidden it from his daughter, that version of his former wife on what was likely the happiest day of her life.

Rosie shrugs assent.

“I met her at a time in my life when I really needed someone.”

“When Sherlock jumped off the roof.”

“Yeah.” John narrows his eyes at her. She’s always liked that story, romanticising it into ‘Sherlock’s Great Sacrifice.’ All these years, and John still has nightmares about it. He continues. “I met your mum and things clicked. And then...well, things fell apart. I’m sorry, Rosie. I wish you could have known your mother. You would have liked her; she was crazy about you. It’s not fair, what happened. It’s not fair to both of us…I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not. You can’t miss what you’ve never had.” 

John disagrees. He remembers her anger when she was younger.

“Do you think,” she asks, “that you two would have stayed married?”

“I don’t know.” It’s the truth. He’s pretty sure they were heading toward disaster. 

“You’ve done a good job, Dad. It’s not like you’re lonely.”

John manages a smile. They have each other. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me,” he says.

“For now,” Rosie concedes. “But in a couple of years…” She wants to study abroad, and as much as John hates the fact she may end up halfway across the world, he knows she’s inherited his wanderlust. They’ve discussed it, but no decisions have been made. She doesn’t press. “I’m just saying that I’m not going to be here forever.”

“I know.”

But she’s not done. She’s searching for the right words. He hasn’t heard Mary’s ghost in nearly fifteen years, but he can almost her whisper, _Wait, John. Let our daughter speak. She finds these sort of things difficult, too._ John waits. “Maybe you’ll want to,” she says at last, “you know. Not live here...alone.”

John smiles. “I’ll be fine, sweetie.”

“Oh, I know that, it’s just...if you wanted to…” She takes a breath, frustrated. Tries again. “In that video...she tells you it’s OK. To move on.”

“I know.”

“She knew, dad. About Sherlock.”

Not this again. “I told you, we’re not…”

 

She tires of dancing around it, tipping her head back and moaning dramatically. “Dad, have you ever actually watched your own wedding video?” she cries to the ceiling, her histrionics worthy of Sherlockian Shakespeare. “The vows! His stupid speech! You never take that ring off because you married him, too!”

The atmosphere sours. “Rosie,” John warns. There’s a line he will not cross, he can’t.

“It’s true! And you know it! He loves you, Dad, and you love him...”

“That’s about enough of that…”

“...but you never _do_ anything about it…”

“...Enough!” He stands, the chair scraping back.

She rises, too, her face flushing. “He’s practically my second dad…”

“But he’s not.”

“He could be if you’d let him be!”

“Sherlock Holmes…”

“...is just some bloke you go around solving crimes with? ‘Cause that’s bollocks. And you know it. You’re constantly touching. And the way you’re always looking at each other? Sometimes I’m afraid to come in the room in case you might be doing something in there. Jesus. Talk about sexual tension.”

“We are _not_ talking about this.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not your bloody business, that’s why.”

“It is! It’s _our_ business. God, Dad, think about someone else besides yourself for once. Think about him! Think about _me_!”

“I have always put you first,” says John, his voice rising. He hasn’t brought another woman in to replace her mother, hasn’t chased after whatever he and Sherlock have. _I’ve done it for you,_ he thinks. A smaller part of him whispers, _You’ve used her as an excuse._ He points a finger in her direction. “You first. Always.” 

“And you’ve hated every minute, haven’t you.” There are tears in her eyes now. “Don’t you deserve to be happy? I love him, too. Why can’t you just admit it?”

John can feel the blood pounding in his ears. His hand trembles. He wills himself to keep calm. “This conversation is over.”

“Is it? What are you going to do if I keep talking? Are you going to shout at me? Tell me I’m stupid and know nothing because I’m just a teenager? That you’re not gay?” She drawls this last word out, mocking. “No one even fucking cares about that anymore!”

“I’m warning you, Rosie…” 

“Warning me about what?” she shouts. “That you’re going to turn into a mean, grumpy old arsehole if I don’t shut up? ‘Cause guess what? You already are one!” The thin thread holding them together snaps. She grabs her backpack and slings it over her shoulder. “I’m going out. Nice chatting with you, Dad.”

“Rosie!”

“Laters,” she drawls, just like Sherlock, and stomps out.

John rubs his temple again before kicking the chair. It skids across the linoleum and topples over.

***

John stews angrily for a quarter of an hour before he finally sets the chair to rights and dusts himself off emotionally. His phone pings: **I’m at Rainna’s.** He sighs, showers, and changes into jeans. Dinner is crossing his mind --he thinks he has rice and chicken breasts in-- when there’s a brief knock at the door. Sherlock lets himself in as he’s done for the past sixteen years. 

“We’re going out,” he announces, crossing his hands behind his back. Usually he comes in, hangs his coat on the peg by the door, and collapses in John’s favorite chair or raids the fridge.

“We are?” John asks, suspicious.

“Your birthday. A proper celebration.”

John narrows his eyes. “My birthday was last week. Had a cracking good time hiding in that blasted hedge, remember?”

Sherlock smiles. 

“Did she text you? She did, didn’t she?”

Sherlock tips his head to the side, slightly, the way that reminds John of a listening dog. “You’ve had a quarrel,” he says, evading the question. 

John just shakes his head in a way he hopes means, _You know. Teenagers._ He does his best to remain relaxed and natural. 

He remembers the days when Sherlock used to narrow his eyes and scan him like a laser, deducing everything about his day and current mood from wrinkled clothing and the length of his hair. Either Sherlock’s got better at deducing on the sly, or he’s purposefully given John a bit of privacy. Some things, however, just can’t be hidden: a row with his daughter is like a siren to Sherlock. Maybe his flat is still bugged, after all.

“You may as well let her go to Glastonbury,” Sherlock says, recalling the last major spat between the two Watsons. “She’ll definitely get very muddy and quite possibly drunk, but she’ll be perfectly all right.” Rosamund Mary Watson might be five foot two, but she’s been taught self-defence by two men who know how to fight. “Get your coat. Dinner.”

“She wants a pair of £100 wellies,” moans John. He takes his jacket from the peg and shrugs it on.

Sherlock waves a hand, dismissive. John knows that look: completely guilty.

“Oh, you didn’t.”

Sherlock studies his fingernails. “Might have done.”

“For god's sake, Sherlock, you can’t just…”

“They were a purple limited edition,” Sherlock explains as if that were the best justification in the world. He’s serious, too. 

“You can’t just go buying her whatever she wants, whenever she wants it…”

“I don’t. And she’s not spoiled.”

John closes his mouth. It’s not as if he can’t afford those ridiculous boots. He has more than enough to live comfortably. He has enough to travel, even. Be indulgent once in awhile. It’s just the purpose of the thing. What is it about Sherlock and footwear? John likes a quality shoe as much as the next man, but he’d better damn well be able to run in it. 

“Where are we going?” John asks as they step outside. 

“It’s a surprise.” Sherlock has rented a Prius. John’s suspicion that his daughter has something to do with this is growing. 

They’re almost at the Elephant before Sherlock speaks. “It wasn’t about Glastonbury.” _Do you want to talk about it?_

John doesn’t answer. _I need time_. He stares out at Walworth Road: it’s the usual mix of chicken shops, bookies, and convenience stores. Nothing exciting. How did he end up here? Sixty-one years old, widowed, flawed father, blogger, best friend to the world’s only consulting detective. It’s not a bad life, certainly, but it feels...like he’s been on pause for far too long. 

“So,” he says, as they drive off. “Where to now?” He wonders if he’s talking about dinner or the rest of his life.

***

They end up eating at a tiny, quirky Korean restaurant somewhere near Kingston. Sherlock steals most of John’s Be Bin Bap and they fall into their regular easy camaraderie. It’s fun: John appreciates the company. 

Sherlock orders salted miso ice-cream for dessert, takes two bites, and pushes the rest of it toward John, who raises an eyebrow but accepts anyway. They drink rich, sweet coffee and share a chuckle about Lestrade’s retirement party. John leans back in his chair. He’s perfectly comfortable, and for a minute, he’s transported back in time to the earliest days of their friendship when they’d gorge themselves after a case, sitting close in tiny, fragrant, back-alley restaurants, spinning recent dangers and frustrations into fairy tales just so Sherlock could go through them later and bemoan John’s overuse of adverbs and florid descriptions. 

But as John looks at Sherlock now, sitting relaxed across from him, he realises that while those adrenaline-filled days were filled with the vigour of a budding friendship, they were often tumultuous and sometimes ugly. He still feels Sherlock’s two-year masquerade as a dead man as one of the great tragedies of his life. It wasn’t until after Mary’s death and the nightmare of Sherlock’s sister that they’d found themselves back on solid footing. This, whatever they have now, he supposes, is what they had always been heading toward. 

He’s sitting there, full and content, when his phone pings: It’s Rosie. She wants permission to stay the night.

“She’s staying at Rainna’s,” John tells Sherlock after waiting to see if his daughter will apologise. She doesn’t.

“Yes.”

“Did she ask you to come and smooth things over?” Traitor.

“No, actually. I sent a message to her yesterday. I said you may be gone all night and that she should make arrangements to stay at a friend’s.”

John’s not sure if he believes it, but he supposes it doesn’t matter, anyway. “She’s old enough to stay alone.”

Sherlock shrugs. 

“Gone all night?” John leans forward and clasps his hands together. “Okay, out with it.”

Sherlock mirrors John’s posture. “I wanted to wish you a happy birthday.”

“You did so.”

“It’s not every day you turn sixty-one.”

“Yes, thanks for the reminder.”

“Which makes me fifty-eight.”

John raises his eyebrows. He’s very much aware of their respective ages. They’ve both aged well, he reckons. Yes, his hair is completely silver, and his beard, when he wears one, is more grey than the auburn it once was, but he hasn’t gained much weight. He’s still active and in good health. His teeth are good. Women still look at him. Frequently. And Sherlock? He wears glasses now and his hairline has receded a bit, but it’s still as thick and curly as it ever has been. 

John waits for the point.

“Ros will be at university soon…”

_Not this again._ “...Her name is Rosie…” he mutters under his breath.

“...and I figured maybe...it would be more economical...sometime in the future...that is, if you wanted…”

John waits. They have both learned patience.

Sherlock steadies himself. “...I’ve bought a cottage.”

“A...cottage?” If anything, John thought perhaps Sherlock had been offering to share digs again.

“Yes. Near Chichester. I’d like you to see it.”

It clicks. “Tonight?” 

“Well, yes. Now.”

“I don’t have anything with me and you’ve lured me out under false pretences to show me your holiday home?” John asks, but there’s no venom in it. 

Sherlock huffs out a breath and his lips squeeze together. “Ours,” he manages. “To use. For.” He flaps a hand. “Us. To go to. Maybe live in one day. If you want.”

John can feel his face doing strange things, as if his muscles can’t seem to settle on the right expression. It’s not the first time Sherlock’s rendered him speechless, but it’s one of the most spectacular examples. “When did you buy it?” he manages.

“In the summer, when I was driving back from interviewing someone on that missing racehorse thing. I’d found a pub for lunch, then took a stroll and just happened to see the ‘For Sale’ sign. I put in an offer there and then. Obviously, it does need some work...and it’s Grade II listed. The fireplace and front parlour are 400 years old. So far I’ve had the roof repaired and the plumbing redone in the bathroom. It has a very large garden and it’s next to a farm, so it’s secluded, very quiet.”

“You’ve...moved in?” John wracks his brain -- Sherlock hadn’t been gone for any extended period of time lately, nor had any of the regular trappings of 221B gone missing, as far as John could tell.

“It’s furnished,” he explains. 

John doesn’t know what to say. He swallows and fiddles with his hands and can’t seem to define what he feels, what this means. One just didn’t go out buying cottages to share with best friends. This was a home, a future. He can hear Rosie in his head: _He loves you!_ There’s a funny feeling coiling in his guts: anticipation? Nerves? 

He’s trying to think of what to say, sitting there with Sherlock looking more distressed each passing moment, when the waiter interrupts with the bill. Sherlock blinks himself back to the present and reaches for his wallet. John lets him pay. They meet each other’s eyes.

“Might there be a corkscrew there?” he asks softly. 

Sherlock finally smiles.

***

It’s nearly midnight by the time they reach the cottage. The darkness has a different quality in the country, a velvety softness that John likes. They have to use a torch to fit the key in the lock. 

Sherlock gives John the grand tour. The ground floor sitting room is all exposed brick and oak beams. The kitchen has been recently updated. Upstairs, three small bedrooms (one is completely empty) and a bathroom. There are also a couple of outbuildings. It’s lovely.

John takes charge of building a fire in the large inglenook hearth while Sherlock potters around, checking this and that, before retrieving the glasses and a rather nice claret. 

“This is a nice chair,” John says genially as he sits. Their chairs have been a running gag now for years, and, true to form, Sherlock’s decked out the sitting room with one larger, more modern leather club chair, and a smaller, upholstered wingback for John. It’s still chilly, and they’ve drawn the chairs closer to the fire, to each other. “You’ve done well for yourself. It’s a great find.”

“Well, as I have said,” says Sherlock, “it’s for you, too. And Ros, of course.”

“Stop calling her that,” John admonishes, savouring his glass of Chateau Haut-Brion. “Does she know you bought this place?”

“Yes. I told her last week.”

_So she’d known, then._ They sit in silence for a while, the fire crackling and popping between them. They’d chatted all through dinner; now, they sit companionably, enjoying the complex flavours of the vintage wine. John realises Sherlock is the only person he’s really been able to do this with: just sit, in silence, without any need to say anything. Just enjoy each other’s company. There are no expectations. 

John stares at the flames for a long time before he sips his drink again. It’s comforting and mellow, like old leather furniture in a library. He drinks much less than he used to and no longer keeps alcohol in the flat. The glass is stemless; he can feel his wedding ring clink against the side. Funny how he never notices it anymore, but ever since his spat with Rosie it seems to be -- not taunting him, per se, but making its presence known. 

“I’ve worn this ring for seventeen years,” he says to the fire before setting his glass down on the side table. He twists the bit of metal with his right hand. “I don’t think it would even come off now.”

Sherlock says nothing. 

“She watched our wedding video again,” John says at last. “I was so angry. I lost my temper.” John can hear Sherlock’s glass joining his on the table. Sherlock is watching him, but John can’t look yet. He feels hot all over, emotional. “I don’t want to take it off.”

“No one is making you take it off, John,” Sherlock says quietly. 

“She called me a mean, grouchy old arsehole.”

“Because you wear your wedding ring?”

“No, not exactly. But I might have been one,” John admits.

Sherlock shrugs in a way that clearly means _we’ve all been one at some point._

“She wants to study abroad, you know.” 

“She’d be fine.”

“I know. It’s just that...sometimes I just look at her and see Mary. And I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or not.”

“You loved Mary.” Sherlock’s voice is gentle, honest. “I loved Mary. Rosie would have loved her, too.”

John chews his lip. “Loved,” he finally says. “Past tense. Very, very past tense.” His love for Mary flared to life and burnt itself out before Rosie was even a year old. What he feels for Sherlock, though...that has continued burning, even when it seemed that their friendship was beyond repair. He fiddles with his ring. It no longer spins easily on his finger. Even if he took it off, his finger would be misshapen for a long time. He should get it cleaned, polished. Maybe resized. Worthy of the person he still wears it for.

The logs shift in the fire. It, too, has burned hot and needs replenishing. It’s late, but John isn’t ready to call it a night yet. He rises and tends it, poking at the charred remains. For as long as he and Sherlock have been sitting in front of them, John has always been the one who tends the fire. He likes the heat of the flames, the smell of it, the way the flames are in constant motion. He likes the shifting glow of hot embers. He doesn’t even mind clearing out the grate. This is an old fireplace, he thinks. There’s been a person tending it for four centuries. It needs a new hearthkeeper. He stands, brushes his hands on his trousers, and looks at Sherlock. 

Two chairs, two men. One hearth, one home.

“There’s more wood outside,” says Sherlock. He looks beautiful.

“You know, I think that’s plenty for tonight,” muses John. He crosses the room and slides the curtain aside. It’s very dark outside.

“Show me the garden?” he asks.

Sherlock raises his eyebrows but gets his coat nonetheless.

***

The night is bracing. John stuffs his hands in his pockets and stands amid a large, overgrown garden. He can’t see much, but the moon is out and provides enough light to get the gist of it: there’s a little brick patio off the back that opens up to a wide expanse of lawn. The hedges haven’t been pruned in ages. To the east there’s a farmer’s pasture. John can see his breath. They walk silently along the property until Sherlock announces that maybe he’d like to try his hand at beekeeping. It seems like such a Sherlock thing to say, and so John laughs and shakes his head, imagining his friend all kitted up in the white suit and veil. 

Here in the darkness, it’s another world, a ghost world in which the veils of time can be parted. In the dark he can see himself pottering around, fixing things, playing fetch with a dog, reading in a deckchair. Rosie could bring her friends, head to the seaside. One day, maybe, her husband. Grandchildren. Sherlock surely would let him use it whenever he liked.

But no, that’s not quite it, he thinks. It’s not a place that is _used_. It’s a place to live, to build and share a life. Together.

He spots a plane approaching from the south, the white lights blinking in the distance. It’s cold, his nose is starting to run, and, for once, he knows exactly what he wants. Sherlock stands next to him, a solid presence, as steadfast as he was all those years ago when he stood in front of their friends and family and made a vow.

His phone pings, snapping him out of it. 

**I’m sorry** , it reads. **You’re right. It was none of my business.**

**We’ll talk later** , he texts back. **I love you. Sorry too. Be home tomorrow.**

It _is_ her business, the whole place seems to say. This could be yours. It is yours. It’s always been yours.

He pockets his phone again and rubs his hands together.

“I don’t want to take it off,” he says again. “Because I am still married.”

“OK.”

“I mean, in the laws of the land I’m not. But I am. Rosie was right.”

“If you’d like to be. No one would refute it.”

The plane gets closer. He can see the red and green lights now, although it is still far, far above their heads. John takes his time.

“She watched our wedding video. But she didn’t mean mine and Mary’s. She meant ours, Sherlock. I married both of you that day.”

Sherlock inhales sharply next to him.

He continues, “I didn’t know it then. But I know it now. I think I’ve known for a long time... I just wasn’t ready to admit it. But I am now. I’m sorry it took me so long.” 

The garden is utterly still. They stand side-by-side. In his peripheral vision, John can see Sherlock’s breath puff out beside him. Eventually, he takes his hand from his pocket and finds Sherlock’s. They clasp fingers. “I think I’m ready to be a husband again. A better one.” 

Sherlock sniffles beside him. John wonders if he’s crying. He squeezes John’s hand. _Yes. Always_.

Above them, the plane passes, losing elevation, heading towards Gatwick, towards London, towards home. 

Home.

The lamp over the doorway casts a golden glow onto the lovingly restored wattle and daub exterior. It would be a fine home. Rosie’s voice echoes in his mind: _Maybe you don’t want to live here. Alone._

“Sherlock?” John finally turns and looks at his friend. His family. His future lover. Sherlock’s face is very pale in the moonlight. John can tell he’s overwhelmed with happiness. They both are.

“Hmm?”

“Is the bed comfortable?”

“I don’t know.”

John looks up at him, smiles cheekily. Licks his lips. He’s finally going to kiss Sherlock Holmes. “How about,” he whispers in his ear, “we find out?” 

***

“And so that’s it,” says John, finishing the speech he’d composed in his head the entire drive home.

Rosie sits across from them. She doesn’t look shocked or scandalised. Instead, her lips wobble and her eyes fill up with tears that quickly spill over. “I don’t know what to say,” she says, sniffing. 

“I believe I should ask your blessing,” says Sherlock, sitting primly on the sofa next to John. He’s doing a decent job of hiding his nervousness, but John knows better: Sherlock loves Rosie, he wants her to approve.

Instead of answering, she gets up and hugs him. “I’d like you to see the cottage,” he says into her hair. 

She wipes her nose with her hand. “What about Baker Street?” She sounds genuinely concerned. 

“Well, I’m not retiring yet,” Sherlock says. “But…” He thinks, looks to John and back to her. “We still have the upstairs room. You’ll need to take the tube to get to school, but if you wanted to…”

“Yes,” she says immediately.

“There’s lots to talk about,” interrupts John, before the conversation runs away from him. “Maybe we’ll go out to dinner together and figure things out. I know things haven’t been perfect, but…” He shrugs. “Maybe your grouchy old arsehole dad has some hope for him yet.” He observes his daughter, this human being that he’s made and raised. He licks at his lips, tries the name in his mouth: “What do you think, Ros?”

He opens his arms.

“Oh my God, Dad,” she says. Her eyes are, at the moment, smeared with mascara, but she laughs. “It’s Rosie.”

 

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> On language: I didn’t know the expression was “another think coming.” I thought it was “another thing coming”. Kind of like I thought the phrase was “all intensive purposes” until I wrote my masters thesis and was yelled at by my non-native English speaker professor. See link below.
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2014/nov/18/mind-your-language-another-think
> 
> This was the cottage BettySwallocks found that could be theirs…  
> http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-44817804.html
> 
> And Rosie's purple Wellies (from Joules)  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> And the interior I based on this…  
> http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-63739319.html
> 
>  
> 
> I have been reasonably assured they would be able to afford it.


End file.
